Posted 3 years ago on Aug. 19, 2013, 1:24 p.m. EST by shoozTroll
(17632)
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"Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education."

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"On August 13, Olney Charter High School students and members from the community held a demonstration outside of ASIPRA for PA’s North Philadelphia headquarters – ASPIRA owns the charter of the school – in support of the teachers’ union drive. By organizing a union with the help of the Philadelphia Alliance of Charter School Employees and the American Federation of Teachers of Pennsylvania (AFT PA), these teachers are on the frontlines of the education reform movement and among the first to seek to unionize the corporate education sector. The teachers went public with their fight at the end of last school year and in response have faced threats and intimidation by principals and administrators."

'You come in at less salary. You work longer hours because you are at-will,' he said.

"Deb Schwartz, an 11th grade English teacher, said that in the 2012 school year, teachers were given 13 furlough days in anticipation of the state budget crisis. 'We felt we did not have a voice in some of the decisions and changes,' Schwartz said.

"When school funding was restored, teachers got back only five of the 13 unpaid days. 'At that point,' she said, 'everyone got together and said, ‘This doesn’t seem right.’

It's all about decentralization. You have to love those Repelicans and Teathuglicans that dream of Libertopia.

Not surprising, really. I live very near to where this occurred, and I can tell you that there's a pretty hard-core racist element around these parts. I'm a member of one of one of those darky ethnic minorities, but don't look it -- I'm kinda light, and speak standard middle-class English -- -- and I've spent many a night on a bar stool listening to the guy next to me - who thinks I'm also white - going on about niggers and Mexicans and Arabs and whatever in the most vulgar and insulting terms you can imagine. Not pretty at all, as those messages reveal, and kinda tough to take when you're the only darky in the bar. And often, it's not who you'd expect (e.g., rednecks, speaking of my own stereotypes) saying it -- it's college-educated, upper middle class people.

No, you definitely can't blame that one on the teachers unions, that's for sure. Maybe its the water. I can, however, tell you, having moved here from out west, where public officials are (relatively) competent and honest, that you get a different breed of bureaucrat around here, and it ain't a better one, as your story illustrates. There are some real serious losers in public office here.

Further to the point, and to the point of the original post, Philly is a disaster, every way you look at it. The city bureaucracy is a very corrupt Tammany Hall-style patronage system where pols hire ward bosses to run city departments, and the ward bosses hire their foot soldiers, and everybody spends their time getting the pol re-elected instead of serving the citizens. The property tax system, which funds the school system, has been run for years by completely incompetent and corrupt political hacks put in there as a sinecure by the pols, and most of the local pols are openly on the take -- they call it "pay to play." The feds have been putting them in jail on a regular basis for years. The mayor, Nutter, is a good guy, and he's trying to clean things up, but his major opponents are the corrupt democratic party machine and the corrupt courts that were appointed by the party machine. That's why all the prosecutions come from the feds. The local courts and the pols scratch each others' backs. I'd be very surprised if the schools WEREN'T a disaster too. And I certainly wouldn't teach there myself. Some of those schools are a dangerous place to be a teacher. You don't need a union -- you need an armed guard.

The story continues, as the libe(R)tarians continue to dismantle the commons..........

"When Philadelphia public schoolchildren return to their classrooms on September 9, 2013, there will be fewer schools, fewer educators and fewer opportunities because of mass school closings and what amounts to financial starvation.

It all started late in 2012, when the Philadelphia School District (PSD) revealed it would be shutting dozens of schools to fill in a $304 million budget gap.

By April, the School Reform Commission (SRC) voted to close 23 neighborhood schools, 10 percent of the city’s total, despite widespread outrage from parents, teachers and students.

In June, the SRC approved massive budget cuts that stripped Philadelphia schools to their bare essentials, eliminating clubs, athletics, art, music and most other extracurriculars. The following month, PSD sent layoff notices to 3,783 employees - including 676 teachers, 283 counselors, 127 assistant principals, 1,202 noontime aides and 307 secretaries - leaving the district severely understaffed at a critical moment.

There will be no aides to help manage larger class sizes and no support staff to supervise lunchrooms and playgrounds. For already-crowded schools receiving students from shuttered buildings, the chaos will be exacerbated.

With less than two weeks until zero hour, there is growing concern that the eighth-largest district in the country is woefully unprepared to open its doors."

Teachers are understandably displeased at being blamed for a problem the state has caused. “It is Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s obligation to fully fund public education. Yet the budget office seems to be employing any and every means to avoid living up to this responsibility,” Philadelphia Teachers Federation president Jerry Jordan said in a statement. “Chronic lack of resources has brought this crisis to our schools, not work rule provisions in collective bargaining agreements.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/indescribably_insane%E2%80%9D_philadelphias_public_school_nightmare/

The needs of children are secondary, however, to a right-wing governor in Tom Corbett who remains fixated on breaking the district in order to crush the teachers union and divert money to unproven experiments like vouchers and privately run charters. If the city’s children are left uneducated and impoverished among the smoldering wreckage of a broken school system, so be it.

I used to get a kick out of Jeremy when he says that he is pro union but he just wants people to have the right to choose. What he is actually saying is..............I support right to work legislation.